Ezra 4:7-8

4:7 And during the reign ¹  of Artaxerxes, Bishlam, ²  Mithredath, Tabeel, and the rest of their colleagues ³  wrote to King Artaxerxes ⁴  of Persia. This letter ⁵  was first written in Aramaic but then translated.

[Aramaic:] ⁶ 

4:8 Rehum the commander ⁷  and Shimshai the scribe ⁸  wrote a letter concerning ⁹  Jerusalem to King Artaxerxes as follows:

Ezra 4:11

4:11 (This is a copy of the letter they sent to him:)

“To King Artaxerxes, ¹⁰  from your servants in ¹¹  Trans-Euphrates:

¹ tn Heb “And in the days.”

² tn The LXX understands this word as a prepositional phrase (“in peace”) rather than as a proper name (“Bishlam”). Taken this way it would suggest that Mithredath was “in agreement with” the contents of Tabeel’s letter. Some scholars regard the word in the MT to be a corruption of either “in Jerusalem” (i.e., “in the matter of Jerusalem”) or “in the name of Jerusalem.” The translation adopted above follows the traditional understanding of the word as a name.

³ tc The translation reads the plural with the Qere rather than the singular found in the MT Kethib.

⁴ sn Artaxerxes I ruled in Persia from ca. 465–425 b.c.

⁵ tc It is preferable to delete the MT’s וּכְתָב (ukhÿtav) here.

⁶ sn The double reference in v. 7 to the Aramaic language is difficult. It would not make sense to say that the letter was written in Aramaic and then translated into Aramaic. Some interpreters understand the verse to mean that the letter was written in the Aramaic script and in the Aramaic language, but this does not seem to give sufficient attention to the participle “translated” at the end of the verse. The second reference to Aramaic in the verse is more probably a gloss that calls attention to the fact that the following verses retain the Aramaic language of the letter in its original linguistic form. A similar reference to Aramaic occurs in Dan 2:4b, where the language of that book shifts from Hebrew to Aramaic. Ezra 4:8–6:18 and 7:12-26 are written in Aramaic, whereas the rest of the book is written in Hebrew.

⁷ tn Aram “lord of the command.” So also in vv. 9, 17.

⁸ sn Like Rehum, Shimshai was apparently a fairly high-ranking official charged with overseeing Persian interests in this part of the empire. His title was “scribe” or “secretary,” but in a more elevated political sense than that word sometimes has elsewhere. American governmental titles such as “Secretary of State” perhaps provide an analogy in that the word “secretary” can have a broad range of meaning.

⁹ tn Or perhaps “against.”

¹⁰ tn The Masoretic accents indicate that the phrase “to Artaxerxes the king” goes with what precedes and that the letter begins with the words “from your servants.” But it seems better to understand the letter to begin by identifying the addressee.

¹¹ tn Aram “men of.”